


Dignity

by thesometimeswarrior



Series: Avatar: The Last Airbender Canon Divergence AUs [10]
Category: Avatar: The Last Airbender
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst, Dark, Friendship, Gen, Prisoner of War, Torture, Trauma, War
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-02-01
Updated: 2018-02-01
Packaged: 2019-03-12 07:07:49
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,770
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13542273
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thesometimeswarrior/pseuds/thesometimeswarrior
Summary: Dignity’s not important, Pakku!Bumi had chastised him once—weeks ago? months ago?—through the wall.Yesterday, I told her about all the ways the War meant that the people in Omashu—well, before they conquered it—couldn’t have any fresh fruit, and the soldiers beat me a few times in front of her and then they burnt me after the lesson after they took me away from her and I screamed and screamed both times! And then I laughed!There are things Pakku tries to cling to, even now.AU in which Azula is the Avatar.





	Dignity

**Author's Note:**

> First of all, I just want to reiterate the warning that this is, in fact, a pretty dark AU, and one that contains torture and graphic depictions of violence. (Though I did try to avoid "torture porn.") It takes place in the AU I was prompted [here](http://runrundoyourstuff.tumblr.com/post/169918428769/) on tumblr, in which Azula is the Avatar, though it can be understood without having read that.
> 
> I hope you find this a worthwhile read.

Pakku wakes, parched throat as always, and gropes around for the wall. It is practically ritual by now, feeling around for the wall each morning in the enforced darkness of the blindfold locked on his face, and pressing his ear to it, hoping to hear Bumi chattering to himself in the adjacent cell. One might expect that after so many mornings he would know instinctually where the wall is, that he could find it in a manner more dignified than groping around. And yet dignity is not something that seems to exist in this reality, not for him, no matter what sort of front he tries to put on with the guards. (Had he screamed, when they beat him, last time? When the Firebender had placed that flaming hand on—had it been his abdomen, this time?—had he managed to retain his dignity and sit stoically, or had he released his scream?)

 _Dignity’s not important, Pakku!_ Bumi had chastised him once—weeks ago? months ago?—through the wall. _Yesterday, I told her about all the ways the War meant that the people in Omashu—well, before they conquered it—couldn’t have any fresh fruit, and the soldiers beat me a few times in front of her and then they burnt me after the lesson after they took me away from her and I screamed and screamed both times! And then I laughed!_

This morning, as Pakku places his ear to the wall, silence answers him. Not surprising—it is Bumi’s day to train the Avatar, after all—but disappointing nonetheless. It is grounding to hear the other man—even when he’s just babbling to himself, on those days when Pakku’s throat is too parched to croak loudly enough to get his attention through the wall. But today, evidently, Pakku is destined not to be grounded; he is destined to float, float…

_floating in the water, so many bodies floating in the water, Chief Arnook, Princess Yue, so many of his students…_

“Waterbender.” The sudden appearance of the guard’s voice, though firm, has a certain bored quality to it, and it anchors Pakku. 

“Yes,” he rasps in affirmation. This, too, is routine. He slowly rises, raises his hands in the air in a show of apparent surrender, and waits for the cell door to click open. 

The guard enters, and when he moves to reposition Pakku to where the leg restraints are in the cell, he grabs him by the exact spot on the shoulder where the newest burn sits. Pakku cries outs instinctively, then stifles himself, grits his teeth in a moment of self-disgust. He keeps them gritted as he is kneeled and his ankles are bound to the ground to ensure his feet remain still behind him, as his arms are bound over his head, and only opens his mouth after the guard has left the cell and barks at him to indicate that he is holding the small cup of water to Pakku’s lips with the standard long pole. 

Pakku slowly sips. The water brings only minute relief to his throat and to his chapped lips, but he is nonetheless grateful for this—tries not to reveal just how grateful. 

After—after the guard has pulled the empty cup away, reentered the cell, removed Pakku from the restraints and left him once again alone—Pakku finds himself curled in a ball on the floor of his cell, hugging his knees. 

He sits up immediately, and prays to Tui and La that no one saw.

* * *

There is moaning as Pakku hears them wheel the metal box in which they contain Bumi back to the Earthbender’s cell.

He waits until he hears them lock it behind him, then gropes his way to the cell wall. “What is the damage?”

The voice on the other side of the stops moaning, sounds surprisingly strong, considering. “My cheek. Perhaps a rib or two. Nothing important!”

“Your _cheek_?” Pakku cringes, imagining a palm-sized disfigurement, angry and red and blistering.

“Yep! I managed to tell her about what the mail delivery system was like in Omashu before the War, and how much fun it was to slide down it, before the guards grabbed me!” He releases a loud, snorting laugh. “It was worth it!”

Pakku sighs. “ _Is_ it worth this, Bumi? They already humiliate us, take away all the dignity we have—”

“I keep telling you! You’re wasting your time and energy thinking about dignity!”

“They are _burning_ us—”

“And it’s a lot easier if you don’t care what you look like when they do it! I screamed and screamed and then I was able to laugh and now I’m talking to you! If you waste all your energy on not screaming, then you don’t have any left to deal with the pain!”

“But there does not _have_ to be pain...They would not beat us if we merely focused on training the girl, and none of the rest of it—”

“We _are_ training the girl. In things that are more important for her and for the world than just the elements. Things that free her from that Fire Nation propaganda, and hopefully bring her to our—”

“It will never _work_ , Bumi! She is a Fire Nation princess! The granddaughter of the Fire Lord! The War has been whispered into her ear since before she could speak!”

There is a momentary silence, and initially Pakku thinks he has won the debate. But then Bumi’s voice comes through the wall again, more quiet and serious than the Waterbender has ever heard it: “The White Lotus is about truth. Don’t we have to try to show her the truth anyway?”

* * *

In Pakku’s dreams, he is floating, floating, floating.

* * *

He is temporarily blinded, as per usual, when they remove his blindfold, blinks several times like an invalid before his eyes finally become accustomed to the light.

The Avatar is already there, with crossed arms and tapping her foot, all four feet of her impatient, regal, and dangerous. “You’re late,” she says, in her high-pitched child voice, as if _he_ were the pupil, as if he were more responsible for his tardiness than the guards that dragged him from his cell.

But pointing these facts out will do nothing to change his situation, so though he feels the shame of it deep in his gut, does not bother doing so. “Forgive me, Princess.”

The girl looks at him with her usual air of cold authority for a moment, then nods in a gesture of permission to which he is accustomed by now. In his more generous moments, Pakku is able to see how she—already powerful with her royal blood—has been warped since the revelation of her true identity into an eight-year-old pawn, drunk on her force-fed power. In these moments, he almost pities the child, almost sees her as the victim that she is. 

But then she smiles cruelly, and he thinks about the lifeless body of Princess Yue, only two years her senior, who had been killed with so many others for the sake of capturing a Waterbending teacher for her. And whatever fleeting pity Pakku may have had flees.

“Have you practiced the forms I taught you last time?” he asks.

“Obviously.”

“Show me.” And he amends himself when she raises her eyebrow threateningly: “Would you please show me, Princess?”

After a smirk, she obliges, and Pakku is once again forced to admit that she is a prodigy. She has progressed more quickly through the basic form than any boy he can remember training, and, by the looks of her progress now, seems to be doing the same with the intermediate forms—moves as naturally as any Waterbender he has ever known…which is all the more impressive considering her natural aptitude for the seemingly contradictory forms of Firebending. 

Were circumstances different, perhaps he would genuinely commend her for the achievement, her gender notwithstanding. But as things stand, his mouth feels ashy with hollow words when, after she finishes, he states: “Very good, Princess.”

They begin the next exercise—a reflex drill, bending ice in her general direction for her to turn to water and bend back toward him—and Pakku meditates on yesterday’s conversation with Bumi. He could at this moment do what he has done for months, plant some seed that could hopefully bloom into something that uproots the warmongering of her upbringing, eventually pull her—the Avatar—to the right side, and turn the tide in this otherwise unwinnable war. But it would mean a beating now, and a worse one later, would probably mean screaming or making himself lame, and proving himself to be as weak and as cowardly as the Fire Nation has painted him and his people to be. 

But he is not just himself, not just a Watertribesman; he is also a member of the Order of the White Lotus. He must remember that there are causes higher than him.

“You are excellent at this, Princess.” Pakku breathes, grounding himself, catching the Avatar’s eye even as he continues to direct ice at her. “Do you know that when I was a boy, we used to make this into a game? You should have seen it—how beautiful the Northern Water Tribe was in the moonlight. It was like the whole city was made of moonlight. And we’d stand and Waterbend, and feel like a part of the ice and the ocean.” He pauses to sit in the memory for a moment, then sees the guards approaching in his peripheral vision, and hurries to continue. “I almost always won. You would have won if you had been there. But it’s all gone now—gah!”

Pakku had braced himself for the blow of the guard’s baton and hates that he cries out anyway when it comes. He manages to stay quiet when the second blow brings him to his knees, though it causes him to lose his hold on the water which splashes him as it falls to the ground next to him. The third blow brings _him_ fully to the ground, and then the guard begins kicking him in the ribs…once, twice, three times, another, and another…He loses count, gasps each time, but wills himself to make no more noise than that. Clenches his eyes shut tight in an effort to bind himself to this resolution. 

Eventually the guard ceases, and barks at him to get up. When he manages to do so, slowly and shifting his ribs as little as possible, he turns back to the Avatar. If there had been any change in her eyes—if the words with which he had earned himself a beating had made any difference at all—it is no longer there. He has only the throbbing in his chest as proof he said them at all. 

“Well, Princess,” he says, winded. “Let us proceed to the next form.”

* * *

They burn him, after. Like always, when he speaks to the Avatar about anything other than Waterbending. Blindfold him again, and walk him to another, different room—one where the girl is not there to see.

They’re running out of space on his body, since they refuse to injure anywhere that might affect his bending and especially his ability to teach it. This time, they select his chin. 

He feels a hand grip it firmly before it ignites.

He is floating, floating, floating.

* * *

He doesn’t realize that he is whimpering, later, when they deposit him back in his cell, until he hears Bumi through the wall. 

“Is that all you can do? How about really crying?”

Pakku silences his shameful griping before forcing his mouth to form words. “I cannot.”

“Did you scream?”

“No.”

“More of this _dignity_ nonsense, Pakku? In front of the guards is one thing, but now? There’s no one to hear you!”

“You would.”

“ _Me_? I’m a stark mad old king whose kingdom is conquered and gone and burnt half-down to the ground— _I’m_ not going to judge you.”

“But you are nonetheless here. And even if you were not…” He pauses, draws a shaking breath. When he speaks, his voice is quieter than it has been in some time—perhaps ever—and the words feel as though they are torn from his chest against his will. “This is all I have left. It is all that I _am_ , now.”

“ _All_ that you are? Come now, Pakku!” Bumi cackles. “I can think of at least three other things you are! A Watertribesman—”

“There is no more Water Tribe! It is all gone, Bumi. I watched it burn and melt—and all my people with it. And without a Water Tribe, there can be no Watertribesmen!” He sighs, feels a sob well up in him but forces it down, speaks before it can manifest itself in a shameful gasp. “And even my bending—I’m no Waterbender anymore. There can _be_ no Waterbenders anymore.”

“You still Waterbend, Pakku,” Bumi’s voice interrupts in a tone which, had it come from anyone else, would be considered blunt, but coming from Bumi sounds gentle. “If you couldn't, they wouldn't have you here. They wouldn't have kept you alive.”

Pakku shakes his head. “What they want from me is a weapon! They have me show the girl to use water as a weapon! That is not Waterbending—it is a distortion and a mockery of it! Waterbending was an art form and a sacred tradition, one that relied on being in line with the Moon and the Ocean, of feeling their push and pull within the self. But that is gone. I no longer have any access to it!”

“But you are a _teacher_. You could—”

“No, I am no longer a teacher. All of my students are dead. I watched their corpses float away.”

“The girl—”

“The girl is not my student! I am not her teacher; I am nothing more than a weapon machinist—to her or to them! And besides,” he scoffs. “if I ever attempt to say anything to her that is not about the pure mechanics of the forms, I am not allowed to finish! They silence me with that baton before I can get a word out, and then I am shaking and bleeding on the floor like a pathetic animal!” Another sigh, pregnant and deep, then whispered words. “I cannot go on this way, Bumi.”

Pakku expects Bumi to retort, to continue to protest, to remind him of the one other identity he supposedly possesses—that of his membership in the Order of the White Lotus—and feels something like relief when, instead, the voice on the other side of the wall merely responds, “Alright,” and then is silent. 

He suspects that Bumi has recognized the futility in it, knows the resolution that he himself has come to. That the War is unwinnable, that White Lotus is dying too, and Pakku’s efforts as a part of it are in vain, do nothing but cause him pain and humiliation, but rob him of the small dignity he has left.

He has, then, he ponders, two options. He could refuse to “teach” her—that is refuse to show her how to operate what they want her to see as a weapon. For if he cannot be an operative for the Order, what purpose could it serve other than increasing the power of the people who took away his Tribe, his city, and his art? And to do that would be not only to mock everything the Water Tribe and Waterbening used to be, but spit in its face, over and over and over again…

But, as he told Bumi, the Water Tribe and everything and everyone it contained is gone. Waterbending is gone too; there is nothing left to make a mockery of. And if he refuses to do what they want, they will kill him, and Pakku closes his eyes at the sudden realization that he wants to _live_ , he wants to _live_ , he is afraid to die, so _afraid_ , he must live, he _must..._

So, he realizes with an abrupt sense of finality, Bumi is right—there is something else that he is: a coward. 

And he has his pride. 

He is a dignified coward.

And that is all he is.

* * *

The next time they bring him before the girl, he speaks in monotone, says nothing more than what is required to instruct her in the new form. 

They bring him back to his cell without so much as a bruise or a scratch on him.

He is floating, floating, floating...has already floated away.

**Author's Note:**

> Please consider leaving a comment!


End file.
